The question: Is there a way to populate the dropdown on the Event Page (Step 3) with the data from the cart so that a user is always seeing the number of tickets they want ordered IN TOTAL instead of adding them IN AGGREGATE each time they return to the Events Page.

In short, no, at least not without a significant refactor to how the ticket selector and SPCO process works.

You could remove the Return to event list and add a link to the event cart to either a sidebar (we also have a mini cart widget you can use), or the main navigation menu so that users can also access their cart.

That’s too bad about the defaults, but I agree that the mini cart widget will help eliminate some of the confusion.

New question, though: Can the Mini Cart Widget be set to show only if the Cart has something in it OR the Cart Session has started? About 2/3 of the people who visit our site don’t really care about our events, so I don’t want to take up real estate with an empty cart if they don’t need it.